Organ Workshop

This year I had the opportunity to serve on the committee to organize this year's Washington DC Regional Workshop as a follow-up to the first regional organ workshop held last August in Alexandria, VA. Working with Dr. Don Cook, Associate Professor in the BYU School of Music, the committee organized the workshop on April 12, 2014, in the Washington DC Stake Center. On the night before the workshop, Dr. Cook and the four instructors performed a Organ Concert and Sing Along. On Saturday morning, registration began promptly at 8am. Donuts and juice were provided. Beginning at 8am, 15-minute one-on-one mini-lessons were given by several of the instructors. In total, the 15 mini-lesson slots were excellent opportunities for students to play a piece and to receive critique from the instructors. After the opening exercises at 9am in the chapel, the students were able to choose from one of three parallel tracks, running constantly until 1pm. During the closing exercises, Dr. Cook taught and encouraged the students to continue their organ training after the workshop. Pizza was served afterwards.

Students registered for the workshop from as far south as Asheville, NC, and as far north as Scranton, PA, as far east as Wilmington, DE, and as far west as Martinsburg, WV. Ages of registrants spanned from 8 to 79. Beverly Parker, President Ezra Taft Benson's granddaughter, came from Springfield, VA. She and her husband brought their granddaughter, Grace McKonkie, from Delaware to attend the conference.

Evaluations received from about 50% of the registrants were collated. Here are the results. The top 5 reasons (see Figure 1) for choosing to attend this year’s DC organ workshop were: 24% to enhance music skills, 21% to receive new information, 21% to receive technical training, 18% to receive inspiration/motivation, and 14% to get help for church calling. The number of students who were positively influenced and inspired from the organ workshop made it all worth the effort to organize the event. This organ workshop reinforced the concept that “Inspirational music is an essential part of our church meetings.” To the extent that organ playing and the hymns played on the organ “move us to repentance and good works, build testimony and faith, comfort the weary, console the mourning, and inspire us to endure to the end,” (Hymns, ix) this organ workshop was successful and suggests that future workshops may be needed in order to continue to encourage the training and improvement of more organ players throughout the church. We thank Dr. Cook and all of the instructors, the local liaisons, the organizing committee, the Washington DC Stake Presidency, and Marjorie Volkel for making this organ workshop possible and extremely successful.